Category: Customer Centric Business

How CPG Leaders Stay Ahead When Consumers Innovate Faster Than Brands

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

Executive Summary

Consumers are accelerating past traditional brand innovation, turning TikTok hacks and viral trends into tangible product shifts in the real world.

A McKinsey study shows that 75% of Gen Z believe brands are “out of sync.” Simultaneously, the TikTok #dupe phenomenon has attracted over 6 billion views (Vogue Business). Brands that move fast and embrace consumer creativity—rather than only analyse it—are gaining market traction and heightened relevance.

In this post, we explore cases like e.l.f. Beauty’s billion-dollar pivot, L’Oréal Pakistan’s viral activation, and food industry hacks gone mainstream. We then outline what CPG leaders must do now; focusing on speed, cross-functional influence, and strategic visibility, to thrive in this new consumer-led innovation landscape.

If you prefer to listen rather than read:

C3Centricity podcast

A New Era: When Consumers Set the Innovation Agenda

Consumers today aren’t just buying products, they’re creating new ones! They’re building recipes, mash-ups, and hacks, then broadcasting them to millions. This isn’t a trend; it’s an innovation model.

Fueling Consumer Momentum

Seventy-five percent of Gen Z report that they rely on user-generated tips and tweaks to solve product frustrations (McKinsey). TikTok’s #dupe has over 6 billion views, with users replicating premium items at home, creating a grassroots movement that brands can’t ignore (Vogue Business).

Why This Matters for CPG

Brand innovation cycles typically take months, or even years. Consumer creativity operates in days. If your organisation isn’t tuned into this frequency, you risk falling behind, both in market relevance and career visibility.

So ask yourself:

  • What consumer hack is trending right now with your product?

  • How fast could you push a pilot response?

  • Who within your teams can align quickly on R&D, marketing, and supply chain?

Case Studies: Consumer-First Innovation in Action

e.l.f. Beauty: Mastering the Dupe Game

Instead of fighting dupe culture, e.l.f. Beauty embraced it by launching affordable alternatives to prestige products. Their strategy generated viral buzz, boosted consumer trust, and drove annual revenues past $1 billion (according to e.l.f. 2023 Annual Report).

Why it worked:

  • They treated consumers as partners, capturing feedback early.

  • They responded with speed, and products moved from insight to shelf in weeks, not months.

  • They celebrated co-created content, reinforcing community trust.

So ask yourself:

  • Could your brand turn a competitor’s product hack into an official version?

  • If speed is the difference between relevance and irrelevance, how quickly can your cross-functional teams decide and act?

L’Oréal Pakistan: Creator-First Launches

In Pakistan, L’Oréal distributed “TikTok Made Me Buy It” boxes to 200 influencers, resulting in 161 million impressions, 4.5 million clicks, and a record-breaking sell-out (TikTok Ads Case Study). Rather than engineering a complex launch, they leveraged social energy directly, aligning product, media, and packaging in real-time.

Why it succeeded:

  • Bypassed typical go-to-market delays.

  • Offered content that engaged both creators and consumers.

  • Cemented brand positioning with rapid action.

So ask yourself: 

  • If your team could launch a limited-run product directly via influencers, would your systems allow it?

  • Who needs to be in the

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The Invisible Gap: Why Mid-Level Managers Hold the Key to Inclusive Innovation

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

Inclusive innovation isn’t a department. It’s not a job title or a laminated poster on a wall. It’s a system. And like all systems, it either amplifies insights from across the business—or quietly silences them.

Right now, too many organisations are falling into a trap. They’re investing heavily in top-down innovation while overlooking the leaders best positioned to make it real: their mid-level managers.

These are the people who translate strategy into execution, insight into action, and vision into traction. Yet they often feel stuck, under-leveraged, and unheard.

And that’s not just a waste. It’s a risk.

If you would rather listen than read:

Mid-Level Managers: The Most Underestimated Tier in Business

Mid-level managers are the glue in every organisation. They understand the friction points on the ground floor and the shifting priorities of the C-suite. They see what data misses and what people aren’t saying. They are, quite literally, the insight engine of the business.

Yet they’re often excluded from major innovation discussions. Decisions are made in executive retreats and innovation hubs, then handed down to middle managers to “execute.” No surprise, then, that so many strategies stall at rollout.

Research from CEB (now part of Gartner) revealed that 50-70% of change initiatives fail due to lack of engagement from mid-level management. Not because they resist change, but because they weren’t included in shaping it.

They can’t champion what they weren’t invited to help build.

If you’re ready to own your leadership, stand out in your organisation, and elevate your impact, I’d love to invite you to my upcoming LADDERS webinar. Learn more here: bit.ly/Ladders2Career

What Does “Inclusive” Really Mean in Innovation?

Inclusion isn’t just about who’s at the table inside your organisation. It’s about who you’re innovating for—and with.

True inclusive innovation puts the consumer at the heart of every decision. Mid-level managers are often the closest to both frontline teams and the consumers they serve. When their voices are included, the result isn’t just internal engagement—it’s relevance, resonance, and real-world traction.

Consumer-led innovation requires internal alignment across departments and hierarchy. And the middle layer plays a crucial role in translating external insight into internal action.

Inclusive Innovation Needs Insight from the Middle

When innovation is designed only by the top 10% of an organisation, you get brilliant strategies that don’t work in practice. When it’s co-created with people from across the business—especially the middle tier—you unlock feasibility, relevance, and momentum.

The companies that outperform their peers on innovation ROI are those who actively gather and use insights from across all levels, including mid-level leaders. According to McKinsey, companies with top-quartile ethnic and cultural diversity are 36% more likely to outperform on profitability. But here’s the nuance: diversity without inclusion does nothing. It’s the inclusion of diverse perspectives, particularly at middle layers, that drives innovation outcomes.

So why are so many companies still treating middle management like a channel, not a source?

Three Innovation Bottlenecks Caused by Mid-Level Exclusion

  1. Stalled Initiatives: When initiatives are “pushed” down without
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